28 March 2017

.... Ghobash’s book is part memoir and part instructional guide to the liberal values he would like to see flourish in conservative Islamic societies. He gives special prominence to educated imams, higher education and a greater tolerance of antithetical views.

.... Much of the security and free movement enjoyed by Ghobash’s generation has disappeared in his lifetime. He offers some social statistics that are symptomatic of the decay. Seventy per cent of Muslims globally are illiterate and 8.6 million Arabs are not enrolled in primary or secondary school, including five million girls.

The unemployment rate is equally dire: roughly 28 per cent of the 100 million Arabs who are between the ages of 15 and 29. Out of several hundred Arab universities in the Middle East, not one was included in the top 200 of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2016-2017.

While Ghobash presents Islam as a guiding set of principles, he concedes that its interpretation, put into the wrong hands, is open to abuse. [New Statesman] Read more